Free Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) by M. L. Buchman

escaping-a-runaway-fire sprint.
    # # #
    Evan scooped his shirt, stuffed it down in his waistband and vaulted over the big log as if it was a gymnast’s pommel horse.
    He caught only flashes of her golden hair through the thick underbrush as he ducked under branches and dodged blackberry patches. He hadn’t run into them coming out, so she must know about them and was trying to lead him into their clutching thorns.
    This wasn’t a Green Beret operation and he wasn’t wearing full battle gear. So, to protect his bare chest, he lost time dodging around the wide, prickly bushes and still earned a few scratches from far-arching branches he didn’t spot in time.
    She had a hundred feet on him when they hit the road.
    Seventy-five at the parking lot.
    He dug in until he was spitting gravel from beneath his sneakers just as the departing muscle cars had earlier.
    Krista still had him by fifty feet at the far side of the lot as they crossed into the compound. Damn but she was a magnificent runner. Her legs were long, but there wasn’t a thing frail about them. They were powerhouses that delivered immense speed.
    Up between the weathered-shingle bunkhouses on the left and the back of the kitchen on the right. At the battered picnic tables where MHA ate meals when at camp, Krista ran down the length before taking a sharp turn toward the kitchen door.
    In a last effort to beat her, Evan turned at the same moment she did, taking a diagonal path. He used a bench to jump up to the tabletops and ran over them like rough terrain—bench, tabletop, bench, ground, bench, tabletop—up and down, up and down.
    She hammered through the door two steps ahead of him and managed to slam it in his face. Unable to stop, he crashed into it full force, only thinking to turn a shoulder at the last moment.
    # # #
    The heavy wooden door blew off its hinges with a crack as loud as a falling snag.
    Krista barely managed to dodge aside as Evan crashed through.
    The door landed flat onto the concrete floor and Evan tumbled into the cramped dining room where they ate when it was too cold or wet to eat out at the picnic tables.
    He rolled twice before fetching up against a stack of folding metal chairs. They scattered to the floor with such a crash she had to cover her ears for several seconds and still her ears hurt.
    Impossibly, he came out of it in a low crouch poised in what looked like some kind of martial arts stance. Soldier trained.
    “Real smooth, Rook,” Krista managed it with a straight face. The doorframe was shredded, the door on the floor was badly cracked, and metal chairs were scattered every which way throughout the room. Crouched in the middle of it was a gorgeous piece of soldier bleeding from a half dozen scratches.
    He grinned up at her, “Green Berets are known for their grace and delicacy.”
    For half a second she considered being insulted, those two adjectives had certainly been aimed at her as weapons many times in her past. But she couldn’t deny his grin and burst out laughing.
    They both lost it and were soon both holding their sides at the pain of the laughter.
    As promised, once they’d recovered their sanity, he gave her victor’s choice of the leftovers. They were back in the kitchen—she wolfing down some cold spaghetti and meatballs, Evan with a massive meatloaf sandwich of bread-meatloaf-bread—no stopping for any fixings—when a shout sounded from the main door.
    Krista peeked out and saw Betsy standing in the shattered doorway, fists on her hips.
    “What the hell have you done to my dining room?”
    Krista started heading for the back door with bowl and fork in hand, but Evan blocked her way. “Can’t go dodging your deeds, Mama Krista.”
    Betsy stalked into the kitchen. She might be barely five-six of lean redhead, but she ruled the kitchen and hence the stomachs and hearts of all of MHA’s smokies.
    “Krista! What the hell?” Betsy waved a hand toward her shattered dining room.
    Think fast! Gotta be a